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Bashing MS 'Like Kicking a Puppy,' Says Jim Zemlin
jbrodkin writes "Two decades after Linus Torvalds developed his famous operating system kernel, the battle between Linux and Microsoft is over and Linux has won, says Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin. With the one glaring exception of the desktop computer, Linux has outpaced Microsoft in nearly every market, including server-side computing and mobile, Zemlin claims. 'I think we just don't care that much [about Microsoft] anymore,' Zemlin said. 'They used to be our big rival, but now it's kind of like kicking a puppy.' From Android and the Amazon Kindle to embedded devices, consumer electronics and the world's largest websites and supercomputers, 'Linux has come to dominate almost every category of computing, with the exception of the desktop,' Zemlin argues as Linux approaches its 20th anniversary."
Even Ubuntu, arguably the most user-friendly distro has problems with sound playback on modern, commonly available sound hardware.
Recent versions of Ubuntu are fine, as are most other recent distros.
You should try them.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Every time I power on or bring my Ubuntu-running laptop out of hibernation, I have to unmute it in software.
I have a dual boot Ubuntu with Windows 7. I really tried to get into Linux and I went through hell getting the graphics working, largely because it wouldn't automatically detect propriety graphics stuff for reasons that were explained to me only they sounded more like religious fundamentalism than actual usability. Then the clock died and feeds me errors on a regular basis and the sound went away with the exception of the start up sound that is the one sound I don't actually want. I have tried and failed to fix these issues and sadly now Ubuntu has become the horrible thing that happens to my computer when I power it up but am not quick enough to leap at the keyboard and select something else from the boot menu.
Like I said, I would love to have a nice clean working version of Linux, but it needs to 'just work' before it can seriously compete on the desktop market. Why would someone change from something that works to something that doesn't under the guise of the word 'free'. I cannot stress enough that to me, Linux is only free if you have no value on your own time or take pleasure out of fixing things which are broken.
Sadly true. I have a 2010 desktop PC with dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu Maverick (both 64-bit). This week I tried to plug in my Keystation USB MIDI keyboard to do some noodling about. Nothing fancy, just get it to the 'push key and have piano sounds come out speaker' stage. I'd previously got the Rosegarden/Timidity/ALSA/Jack stack working on Lucid on another PC, but hadn't configured professional audio since doing a fresh Maverick install on this new box. I even had Rosegarden, Jack and timidity-daemon already installed via Synaptic.
Ubuntu experience: plug in the keyboard. Light goes on. Start Rosegarden. It shows Timidity and Keystation detected as MIDI devices. It shows notes coming from the keyboard. But no sound comes out. Spend several hours digging into the guts of Timidity++ config files, Googling, trying to work out where in the Timidity-ALSA-PulseAudio-Jack stack the sound is stopping. Start multiple command windows, stop and start services, read text files in /etc, Google and apt-get multiple troubleshooting tools. Add user to 'audio' group and reboot. Try not to frag my existing audio setup in doing all this.
End result: half an evening wasted, hair shredded, no luck.
Windows 7 experience: reboot into Windows 7. Google "garageband for Windows". Get recommendations for MixCraft. Download MixCraft free trial. Start it. Push key on Keystation. Sound comes out. Just like that. No insane configuration weirdness required. I'll happily pay $75 for something that works.
I love Linux but sadly.... getting the simplest thing in multimedia to work at all is still a nightmare. Just... ugggh. Bad, bad, bad.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Linux is to servers and windows is to desktops.
On the servers, I based my assumptions from the data of http://www.top500.org/stats/list/36/osfam
On the desktops, I based my assumptions from the data of http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10
As a Linux user (both servers and desktop), I accept the reality that Linux dominates the server market and Windows on the desktop market. But on the occasion that somebody claims that Linux dominates the desktop market or WIndows dominates the server market, I usually ask for some citations or do some research a.k.a using google.
IMHO, it is good for us to have these two options. It creates competition. When there is competition, the competitors try to improve their product so that they can win the seat of their competitor while maintaining the achivements that they currently have. The end result is simple... USERS WIN!!!
tl; dr version
person 1: i don't like linux, it doesn't work for me, here's an anecdote
person 2: you are a fool, linux works for me, here's an anecdote
person 3: windows is easier to use, here's an anecdote
person 4: no it isn't, here's an anecdote
person 5: yes it is, anecdote a, anecdote b.
person 6: no it isn't...
and so on. Now go read the story about the place in Denmark looking to hire nude programmers. You probably have it open in another tab anyway.
blah blah blah